Madam, The Licensees would like to reply to a recent letter sent in regarding the HAND scheme in Ross. This scheme has been running very successfully in Hereford for a number of years and we reformed the HAND in Ross as there appeared to be an increase in the number of incidents involving alcohol over weekend nights.
In Mr Meek's letter he states, "that we should be seeing less alcohol being served to those over the limit, less drugs being dispensed and a reduction in violent crime in general, such as murder."
In answer to these points: We have now been running for a couple of months and a number of people have been served with HAND bans from the pubs which are involved in the scheme. Obviously with anything that starts new there will always be teething problems, but with the assistance of the Hereford group and the local police we are confident that these will be ironed out.
Drugs are usually dispensed before someone has entered a licensed premise. To follow up on this point it has been clarified by the police that as Licensees, if we believe that someone has drugs in their possession, we do have the right to search them before entry into our buildings and we will use this right if necessary. At our next meeting the local police will be giving us a speech on drugs awareness to demonstrate our commitment in keeping drugs out of our pubs.
The murder that happened as far as we are aware had nothing to do with a licensed premise and alcohol did not play any part. We cannot be responsible for everyone in Ross.
We have liaised with the Local Council and will be putting together a bullet point leaflet of our aims and commitments to be delivered to residents of Ross with the next council newsletter. I hope Mr Meek who wrote to the Gazette will give us his full support in our aim of making Ross a safer place.
The Hand Committee, Ross